J. Study Relig. vol.31 n.1 Pretoria 2018

http://dx.doi.org/10.17159/2413-3027/2018/v31n1a0

In this Festschrift we want to both celebrate Professor Dr. Martin Prozesky's academic career as student and scholar in Religious Studies and Ethics, and his substantial impact on South Africans of all walks of life through his thought, publications, and practical ethics training in the academy, and in the corporate and public domains. This comes after nearly 50 years since he started teaching Comparative Religion in the then Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) in 1969, and also 40 years, since he started as Senior Lecturer in 1977, at the then University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg campus, teaching Philosophy of Religion in the Department of Divinity1. It is also nearly 40 years since he was introduced to Process Philosophy and wrote his review of Process Theology: An Introductory Exposition, by John B. Cobb Jr. and David Ray Griffin (1979). It is also now 10 years since he took early retirement from the University of KwaZulu-Natal in 2007, and the publication of his very significant Conscience: Ethical Intelligence for Global Well-Being (2007). This year, Prof. Dr. Prozesky will celebrate his seventy-fourth birthday, and we are celebrating his contributions to our discipline, and its sub-disciplines, at the 40th Congress of the Association for the Study of Religion in Southern Africa (ASRSA).

Also, of very important historical academic significance at archival discursive levels, for not only the study of Religion and related sub-disciplines, on the African sub-continent, but also the socio-political transformation in South Africa, is the founding of ASRSA, in 1978, including its journals. Prozesky was the Founding Editor of ASRSA's first journal, Religion in Southern Africa, which appeared twice a year from January 1980 till July 1987. Thereafter it was renamed the Journal for the Study ofReligion(in Southern Africa), and he continued as the Founding Editor, latterly with P.S. Maxwell as Executive Editor, until the end of 1998. So, for twenty years Prozesky was at the coalface of knowledge production on Religion in Southern Africa.

Together with his fellow collaborators, and with the publication of the journals, Prozesky ground-breakingly provided the requisite academic and scholarly leadership in both academic and socio-political matters, as these impacted the academy, and vice versa. Not only did they play a very significant role in many of the processes that dismantled the apartheid ideological edifice, and eventually brought it to a fall. They also laid the foundations for the critical scholarly research and knowledge production for Religious Studies, including Ethics Studies. Amongst others, Prozesky also played a profound role as he and his colleagues, accompanied our first democratic elections, the founding of our new Constitution (1996/ 1997), and our entry into the new millennium. With critical, scholarly deliberations, conceptualisations, reflections, and the requisite discursive knowledge production, they provided the intellectual groundwork that critically and transformatively impacted the birth of our new nation - "the rainbow nation". These interventions had, and continue to have national, continental, and international reverberations in academia, and we believe, that this will continue to go from strength to strength.

The initiation of the process that lead to the production of this Festschrift in honour of Prof. Dr. Prozesky, has therefore been welcomed from many parts of the world. And, in this Editorial, we provide a brief overview, including the abstracts from the different articles.

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Professor Dr. Martin Prozesky was born on 23 October 1944 in Newcastle, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. After short periods of primary schooling in Johannesburg and Estcourt, he had most of his schooling in the junior division of Oudtshoorn Boys' High School and completed his high school years at the same school. His university education took place at Rhodes University (BA 1966) and the University of Oxford (MA 1973), followed by graduate studies at Cambridge, Massachusetts and by a Doctor of Philosophy degree from the University of Rhodesia (now University of Zimbabwe) in 1977. He first lectured at Rhodes University and the former University of Rhodesia, besides working in the publishing business from 1970 to 1971. He joined the staff of the former University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg, in 1977 as a senior lecturer. In 1980 he became the founding editor of the journal of Religion in Southern Africa, the official journal of the Association for the Study of Religion in Southern Africa, which appeared twice a year from January 1980 till July 1987. In 1988 it was renamed the Journal for the Study ofReligion, and he continued as the founding editor, latterly with Patrick S. Maxwell as executive editor, until the end of 1998. He was also Dean of the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Natal (Pietermaritzburg campus, 1991 - 1995), and in 1997 became the founding Director of the University of Natal's Unilever Ethics Centre until his early retirement as Senior Professor of Comparative and Applied Ethics in 2007. Amongst others, Prozesky edited and co-authored Ethics for Accountants and Auditors (revised edition, Cape Town, Oxford University Press, 2009), and is also the founding director of Compass Ethics CC. This close corporation, provides training and other resources to the corporate and public sectors, in various areas of applied ethics. Prozesky remains a frequent speaker at conferences and seminars in various countries, and also often addresses schools, businesses and other audiences.

Amongst others, it was Prof. Dr. Prozesky's first book, Religion and Ultimate Well Being: An Explanatory Theory (London: Macmillan, and New York: St Martin's Press, 1984) that led to his present work in ethics. He is the author of four other books, a novel, and co-author or co-editor of four more, besides writing many academic papers and well over 150 press articles. His present work includes Accountancy and Ethics, Religion and Ethics, Sports Ethics and Professional Ethics. His latest book is Conscience: Ethical Intelligence for Global Well-Being, whichappeared in 2007 from the University of KwaZulu-Natal Press; and his novel, Warring Souls: A Story of Clashing Faiths (2017), was published and launched earlier this year. This was his first attempt at using fiction to explore the serious tensions between conservative and radical Christians in a fictitious, South African university setting. His latest book, Honest to Goodness, is forthcoming from from Wipf and Stock Publishers, Eugene, Oregon, USA, in their Resource Publications imprint. This book provides the author's semi-autobiographical account of the scholarly work and personal experiences that lead him to differentiate between the classical Christianity of traditional, orthodox faith and what he calls an alternative Christianity that has been emerging since the pioneering work of Friedrich Schleiermacher, and why he considers the latter to be closer to the work and words of the Jesus of history, than other modern historical portraits.

Finally, on the basis of his substantial research outputs throughout his career (cf. the complete list at the end of this volume), Prof. Dr. Prozesky was made a Fellow of the former University of Natal in the late 1990s, and was awarded the status of Emeritus Professor of the University of KwaZulu-Natal, following his early retirement in 2007.

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The Festschrift, firstly, offers a brief overview of Prof. Dr. Prozesky's own ethico-spiritual journey and academic career, and then provides a variety of critical academic reflections on his work, either directly, or indirectly. As such, each contributor's thought both critically, and constructively reflects on significant aspects of the broader challenges the world faces with regard to the study of religion, theology, spirituality, and ethics, but also on Prozesky's own intellectual endeavours in this regard. Contributors provide academic insights from within their own very rich and very significant life-long individual scholarly productions, teaching and learning practices, as well as their broader community engagement impacts, whether at local or international levels. Their own careers and multiple scholarly works and publications provide ample outstanding and insightful towering counterpoints, and parallels to Prozesky's own life and work, both continentally and internationally. As such, the articles for the Festschrift come from former fellow students dating from the 1960s, intellectuals who had a formative influence on Prozesky's own intellectual journey, former colleagues who worked with him in the fields of Religious Studies, Theology, Ethics, Applied Ethics, and Applied Ethics training in corporate and public institutions, and some students.

For us, Denzil and I, it has been an honour and a pleasure, to prepare and edit this Festschrift. From the first, when we broached the idea with Prof. Dr. Prozesky, as well as contacting all his esteemed fellow travellers and intellectual friends in academia, all were very forthright in their support and commitment to the project. We think it certainly marks a significant milestone in the discursive history of the study of religion, theology, spirituality and ethics in South, and Southern Africa. We think it also not only honours the substantial achievements of a very significant and special academic in the South African landscape, but also that of his colleagues, collaborators and students. All this make this volume a very significant and special one. Retrospectively, it provides the appreciation and celebration of some insights into past, and existing engaged scholarly work and achievements in the broader arena of the focus of the Festschrift, but also Christianity, more particularly. Prospectively, it outlines some of the challenges ahead, not only for the inter- and trans-disciplinary study of religion, and the diverse religious formations on the African continent, but also the academic pursuit of our joint global thinking about religion, and our work towards ethical well-being in the world. In this regard, we want to also thank Prof. Dr. Prozesky for allowing us to publish his post-retirement inaugural presentation as Professor Extraordinaire, University of the Free State, 'Tomorrow's Ethics in a Globalizing World', delivered on 28 August 2013. Amongst his many achievements, was his reconfiguring of the study of Religion at the University of the Free State, under the Vice-Chancellorship of Prof. Dr. Jonathan Jansen, and in collaboration with Dr. Maniraj Sukdaven. Congratulations Martin.

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The Ethical and Spiritual Project of Martin Prozesky

In his 'The Ethical and Spiritual Project of Prof. Dr. Martin Prozesky: Influences and Interests', Maniraj Sukdaven provides a cursory overview of the life and thought of Professor Dr. Prozesky, and his contributions to academia via his ethical and the spiritual project. There were many people of various personalities that influenced his life, including the path he chose in academia. Some of these were scholars, such as the internationally acclaimed Professors Alister Hardy, John Hick, Lloyd Geering, Ninian Smart, Wilfred Cantwell Smith, feminist professors Mary Daly, Ursula King and Rosemary Radford Ruether, and various process theologians. Others were spiritual leaders such as Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Mahatma Gandhi, the Chief Rabbi of the orthodox United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth (1991 - 2013), Jonathan Sacks, and the Dalai Lama.

From his base in Theology and Religious Studies to his move to Ethics and Spirituality it could be established that there are five main contributions in Prof. Dr. Prozesky's work which he had made to academia and of which cognizance should be taken. These are: (1) the religious philosophy of Friedrich Schleiermacher; (2) the development of a critical theology; (3) his values-based explanation of religion; (4) the debate about God; and (5) the need for a multi-cultural, even global, multi-disciplinary approach to Applied Ethics with special attention to African Ethics. These contributions among other works are discussed in this article. (Information for the article comes from an interview with Prof. Dr. Prozesky, that was recorded and transcribed.)

Religion and Theology from South Africa

Following on Sukdaven's biographical essay on Prof. Dr. Prozesky's scholarly journey, we open the Festschrift, with David Chidester's contribution, 'World Religions in the World'. Interacting with some of the research that predates his own Savage Systems (1996), and continuing the discussion further following the landmark publications of Masuzawa's The Invention of World Religions (2005), and his own, Empire of Religion: Imperialism and Comparative Religion (2014), amongst others, Chidester provides his latest insights on the latest, and future developments in the study of Religion. His main point is that the classification of 'world religions' is highly problematic because of its arbitrary construction, its exclusion of indigenous religions, and its easy availability for ideological manipulation. He points out that the imperial edifice of 'world religions' has been dismantled in recent scholarship in the study of religion. Yet, the notion of 'world religions' has been enthusiastically embraced by advocates of inclusive citizenship in democratic societies and by advocates of indigenous empowerment in postcolonial societies. His brief essay reviews the terms of engagement for critically reflecting on the various deployments of 'world religions' as a prelude to thinking about religion in the world.

The next contribution, 'Christian Humanism, Progressive Christianity, and Social Transformation', comes from John W. de Gruchy, a former collaborator of Prof. Dr. Prozesky, on the very significant, A Southern African Guide to World Religions (1991), and Living Faiths in South Africa. (1995), which are still being prescribed at some institutions, in part, or in full. De Gruchy explores his understanding of Christian humanism in conversation with Prozesky's notion of progressive Christianity as he understands it. He does so, with an eye on social transformation as an essential outcome of doing Christian theology. Central to the conversation is how we understand the role of creeds and confessions in Christian faith, and the significance of the confession that Jesus the truly human one is the Christ of faith. This leads him to a discussion on the Incarnation as the foundation for Christian humanism, and Eucharistic community as the embodiment and agent of social transformation.

Contemporary religious and theological scholarship is acutely aware that different contexts result in different ways of thinking and speaking about God. Rian Venter's 'Thinking God and a Global Multi-religious Context: Trends, Challenges and Possibilities', situates God-talk intentionally in the present global and post-secular horizon and asks about the implications of this hermeneutical move. Mapping scholarly trends in this regard is a specific aim of the article, which is written from the perspective of Systematic Theology in conversation with the Study of Religion. The development of reflection on God in inter-religious theologies and in the so-called Trinitarian rediscovery is discussed. Two academic challenges are identified as part of a constructive proposal - a re-envisioning of the relationship between the Study of Religion on the one hand and Christian Theology and Systematic Theology respectively on the other at public universities. Possible future constructive avenues are suggested and the article proposes a minimalist way forward to engage the global and post-secular context, and highlighting an inter-subjective ethos, attention to discursive performances and the African context.

Basil Moore's contribution, 'Learning from Black Theology' is an edited version of his Doctor of Philosophy honoris causa presentation at Rhodes University in 2012. He argues that Black Theology had a profound effect on the religious, especially Christian scene in South Africa in the 1970s and 1980s. The traditional stance was that clergy should not get involved in politics. What Black Theology did - with Moore making a very substantial contribution in the late 1960s and early 1970s himself - was that it enabled clergy to understand that the Gospel was not primarily about the forgiveness of sins but about setting the oppressed free. Thus, politics was at the heart of the work of the clergy in South Africa. Black Theology also had a radical understanding of God. He argues that while the need for Black Theology may be less critical in post-Apartheid South Africa, there are major lessons to be learned from how it constructed the Gospel message in the then current context of oppression and exploitation of then, oppressed South African blacks.

Ethics and Spirituality in a Global Context

Following her earlier collaboration with Prof. Dr. Prozesky, on Gandhi and South Africa: Principles and Politics (1996), Judith M. Brown's title, is 'Gandhi: A Man for Our Times?' Her essay links with three major concerns in Prozesky's work as he has engaged with a radical critique of religious traditions and structures in the South African context of the end of apartheid: the involvement of dominant religious traditions in sustaining power structures and inequality; the nexus between religious beliefs and organizations and violence; and the failure of many 'religions' to meet the needs of serious seekers after meaning and truth. She examines the life and thought of M.K. Gandhi in the light of these concerns, particularly the way he addressed the nature of India and its problems as British imperial rule ended. It also focuses on Gandhi's critique of Hindu tradition as a powerful buttress of profound social inequality particularly relating to caste and gender; his response to violence in the name of religion and community; and finally his underlying belief that true religion was the individual's search for the divine and that all religious traditions by contrast have very partial visions of truth. She suggests that Gandhi should be seen not just as an important historical figure but very much as a man for our times also.

Louise Kretzschmar focuses on 'Convergence and Divergence: A Christian Response to Prozesky's "Global Ethic" and Secular Spirituality'. The aim of her article is to identify areas of convergence and divergence in the value systems of secular ethics and Christian ethics and to address what is meant by the moral development of individual persons and communities. The article discusses the views of Martin Prozesky on religion, the creation of a global ethic and secular spirituality from the perspective of Christian ethics. The discussion draws on the 'Barthian-Thomism' of Nigel Biggar and the four key moral questions posed by Dallas Willard in order to identify elements of convergence and divergence related to worldviews, values, virtues and the moral development of persons and groups.

Ursula King focuses on 'Teilhard de Chardin's Vision of Science, Religion and Planetary Humanity: A Challenge to the Contemporary World'. Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955) was a great thinker, scientist, and mystic - he was above all an extraordinary human being whose inspiring vision still remains far too little known. He visited South Africa twice, in 1951 and 1953, to undertake palaeontological research and collaborate with South African colleagues. Throughout his life, but especially towards its end, he was much interested in the future of planetary humanity and he always stressed the importance of seeing, of having a vision that pulls us forward and upward. For him, life is vision. She examines how this vision - embracing science, religion and the future of humankind - presents a challenge to the contemporary world and an inspiration to create a better future for all.

Ethics from the African Context

The main goal of Munyaradzi Murove's 'Indigenous Knowledge Systems Discourse and Inclusionality: An Afro-centric Quest for Recognition in a Globalised World' is to demonstrate that in a multicultural and globalised world the indigenisation of knowledge has to be pursued in a way that demonstrates an element of inclusivity. To achieve this goal this article has been given three foci as the thrust of its structure. Firstly it is argued that indigenisation of knowledge must be pursued under the presumption of a recognition that all knowledge is cultural or context specific. Secondly, the article goes on to show that the indigenisation of knowledge in Africa has gone hand-in-glove with the celebration of the knowledge that is usually regarded by Western scholarship as primitive and thus redundant in the face of modernity. Finally, drawing from the insights made in previous sections, the article advances the argument that the indigenisation of knowledge should be seen as a quest for inclusionary knowledge whereby all knowledge is understood as contributing to the generality of human existence by deliberately taking an ethical stance to the effect that in a globalised and multicultural world, no knowledge system should be privileged as superior to any other knowledge system. All knowledge has to be seen as contributing to the plurality of knowledge in a globalised and multicultural world.

In his 'Reflection in Practice as Source of Values: The Cross-Cultural Creation of a Health-care Ethics in Post-Apartheid South Africa', Augustine Shutte, now late, takes as a starting-point, Alasdair MacIntyre's well-known definition of a 'practice' and argues that the 'reflection' involved is best engaged in as a dialogue between different partners, whether individuals or groups. Such reflection, aimed as it is, at the achievement of excellence in the practice concerned, can (if pursued with rigour and commitment) uncover values embedded in the practice which, however limited the practice (rugby, gardening), have a wider, even universal, scope. When the partners in dialogue have general recognition (religions, countries, professional bodies, political parties) these values can provide materials for a Global Ethic (Parliament of the World's Religions) that is constructed from the bottom up (the Oregon Plan) rather than by some public authority (the United Nations). Shutte provides grounds for this approach, by examining the practice of health-care in post-apartheid South Africa, and the co-reflection of scientific health-care professionals and traditional healers that is part of constructing a new model for health-care that better serves the needs of all South Africans. This dialogue has uncovered values whose scope is wider than that of health-care presently, and which, he shows, could provide a really humane foundation for a society containing different cultures.

A former collaborator with Prof. Dr. Prozesky in Applied Ethics, Larry Kaufmann, asks: 'Can Ethics be Taught?' His article is a critical reflection on the years he spent in association with Prozesky developing and presenting ethics training modules to a broad cross-section of professional and other groups. Describing the component parts of the workshops, he also comments on the rationale behind them, taking a look at both strengths and weaknesses. In a sense this is a critique of the discipline of Applied Ethics, yet at the same time it offers a possible pedagogy for what Prozesky and he would call 'ethics at the coalface'.

Historical Perspectives on Theology

For his 'Theology Before and After Bishop Robinson's Honest to God (1963), Lloyd Geering chooses to reflect on what he regards as a bombshell that blew the roof off the church - not because it introduced original thinking, but because it brought to unsuspecting people in the pews some knowledge of the developments that had been taking place for quite some time in academic theology. It initiated the turbulent sixties from which time onwards the slow decline in church allegiance in the Western Europe began to accelerate. The thought of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Rudolf Bultmann and Paul Tillich, which Robinson summarized in his book, were themselves simply the twentieth century version of the radical changes in theology made necessary by the advent of the post-Enlightenment world, and which had been set in motion in rather different ways at the beginning of the nineteenth century by the philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, and the theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher. Since the Enlightenment brought to humans the freedom to think for themselves (Bonhoeffer labelled this phenomenon 'Humanity's coming of age'), so, the theological enterprise gradually changed from being the exposition of divinely revealed dogmas to the human exploration of religious experience. In retrospect, Robinson's book is to be judged a significant marker in a process of ever-changing theological thought.

Ron Nicolson's ' "O worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness: let the whole earth tremble before him" (Psalm 96:9)' asks the question: Is there a place and a future for persons who still hold to the centrality of Christ, or of Jesus of Nazareth, in their lives, but who are agnostic about what traditional Christianity would hold to be central points of dogma or even about the existence of what Cupitt and others have called an 'objective God'? His view is that the liberal theology which dominated the 1950s and 1960s has given way to more conservative and indeed near fundamentalist views in both Protestant and Catholic theology. It is to be noted though, that within both evangelical and catholic circles, there is some evidence of a swing back to more liberal views. Most people in the Western world have however lost any link with the church or with institutional Christianity. Yet, according to polls, a surprising number still claim that they 'pray' and believe in a 'higher power'. Movements such as the Sea of Faith, or Progressive Christianity attempt to hold on to Christian imagery and cultus while leaving open the question of whether the concept of God is any more than a human construction. Attendance at Cathedral-type worship where dignified ceremony and beautiful music leave the worshipper free to place his or her own interpretation on the words is steadily increasing. Given this state of affairs, a further question is: Does this signify a new form of religious belief, more fluid and less linked to institutional dogma? Following James Fowler, Nicolson is of the view that the direction for the most mature form of faith, is that which acknowledges ambiguity and unknowableness in religious belief. Robert Ellwood suggests that the Western post-Christian world is moving unto what he calls the 'folk-religion' stage where persons may follow many different religious beliefs and practices simultaneously in a syncretistic way without believing any of them in a literal sense or alternatively believing them all, despite difference and incongruity. Is this the future of religion? Is there a future for a type of Christianity which still reads the scriptures, practices the liturgies, tells the stories but does not necessarily believe that Jesus is God incarnate or indeed that there is any God?

Theology and God

In this section, we provide two brief opinion pieces, by two of Prof. Dr. Prozesky's, peers, both reflecting on, and providing some perspectives on a few academic challenges in the broad arena of the study of theology, and how to reflect on God, in academe. With regard to his own publications, it implicitly links up with his A New Guide to the Debate about God (1992).

Quoting Richard Dawkins, Trevor Williams asks: 'What makes you think Theology is a subject?' He answers this question by pointing out that Theology is under attack from many quarters today, from the fearful believers who see it as a threat to their faith to the secularists who see it as a threat to truth. Foremost among the opponents is Richard Dawkins. Outraged by a donation to Cambridge for the study of theology, he contrasts the usefulness of science with the uselessness of Theology. The question though, is: What is Theology? In his article, Williams draws a distinction between Confessional Theology and Critical Theology. By Confessional Theology he means the affirmation of an exclusive point of reference by which all other claims to authority and knowledge are judged. Thus Christians theologise their confession that 'Jesus Christ is Lord', and Critical Theology is the rational articulation of the Christian Faith from within the circle of Faith - the convictions, experiences, and hopes grounded in the story of Jesus and characterized by commitment and involvement. He then explores how both theologians and scientists, as well as the two types of Theology can go wrong.

John B. Cobb reflects on 'God and Universities'. He argues that the exclusion of God from contemporary academia did not come about because of evidence or argument but because the scientific adherence to the treatment of the objective world as self-contained was increasingly applied to everything. Also, the limiting of acceptable thinking to topics falling within one academic discipline or another had no place for continuing a discussion of the topic. The self-assurance of academia is beginning to weaken. The exclusion of God as a causal factor is part of the exclusion of purpose including human purpose. This leads to implausible explanations that are assumed to be needed but rarely explicitly defended. If the evidence for the importance of not only objective data for spiritual realities and beliefs, as well as subjective human experience are allowed, the door will be opened to changes that eventually could reinstate God in the university.

Towards the Future

With our contribution, 'Martin Prozesky and "Well-being": Retroactive and Proactive Perspectives on Religion and Ethics in Social Transformation', and, secondly, with a contribution that Martin generously offered, 'Tomorrow's Ethics in a Globalizing World', we conclude the Festschrift.

We primarily focus on outlining the discursive threads in Prozesky's 'Implications of Apartheid for Christianity in South Africa', in the book he edited, Christianity amidst Apartheid: Selected Perspectives on the Church in South Africa ([1985] 1990); his first book, Religion and Ultimate Well-Being: An Explanatory Theory (1984); and his latest book, Conscience: Ethical Intelligence for Global Well-Being (2007). This is under three headings: Apartheid as Heresy; Explaining Religion; and Conscience Ethics. We conclude with some appreciative and critical reflections, that we believe, can take Prozesky's life-long project, further. This is positioned in the social transformation paradigm.

Finally, with his contribution, Prof. Dr. Prozesky reflects on the future of ethical practice, by arguing that it will go through five great transitions. They are: firstly, from the ethics of obedience to an ethic of creative commitment; secondly, from a primary concern with micro-ethics to an equal and even greater concern with macro-ethics; thirdly, from a cluster of regional value systems to a cooperatively created global ethic; in the fourth place, from a conceptual base in western philosophy and theology to an academic base in the social and natural sciences; and in the fifth place, from dependence on religion in important parts of the world, including ours, to what he calls a relationship with religion characterized by cooperative, critical and creative independence for ethics.

1 From 1977, Prozesky taught Philosophy of Religion and added some World Religions and Philosophies components to his courses. Under his leadership, the Department of Divinity, changed its name to the Department of Religious Studies in 1984, and introduced modules on The Historical Introduction to Religion, Basic Themes in Religion, Living Religions, Advanced Themes in Religion, and Religious Ethics.